“We would like to nominate the group of participants that live at the Crescent Centre Apt. 509. Not only have these four participants been great representations of the J1 program, most recently they all came together to help fellow J1 participants in Louisville. As in life, sometimes we get put into unforeseen circumstances. When I reached out to this apartment asking for help they quickly responded with such kindness, graciousness, and selflessness. They are a perfect example of one of my favorite things that the J1 program does, brings strangers together and creates a family. To Apt. 509, thank you for helping those around you and making sacrifices in order to help the entire J1 community in Louisville. My hope is that your example will inspire others to help those in need around them.”

- Megan Gilbride, WWCE

Names: Carmela De Asas, Charlene Montano, Rizel Ocampo, Inno Espende

Positions: (respectively) F&B, Banquet, F&B, Front Office Agent

Location: Louisville, Kentucky

Fun Fact About You All: We all love cooking, cooking Filipino food. Charlene loves baking, Rizel and Charlene loves shopping. Carmela likes Netlfix, she can do it all day. And Inno, is just cool, calm and collected. Lol. He likes sleeping. 

What are your favorite activities to do together as an apartment? Do you have movie nights or family dinner or anything like that? We love to cook Filipino foods, if not every night then usually most nights. We definitely miss home, and we put our longing on food. 😊 Most of the time, due to the busy and tiring schedule at work we stay in our rooms, but time to time we find time eating dinner together especially on occasions.

When there’s tension in your apartment, how do you all handle it? We deal with it as mature individuals. We would like to believe that we are all grown up people already. And living with different personalities for the first time and in a foreign country, every now and then there would be misunderstandings, but respect to one another should always be there.

How have you grown from living with many people with different personalities? We just need to understand that we can't control the things that happened around us, especially other peoples personalities, and nobody is perfect. But time fixes things up with communication, it might take awhile but it gets fixed.

What’s everyone’s #1 favorite thing about living in Louisville? Our favorite thing about Louisville is its rich culture, like we have already experienced the Kentucky Derby (working), and seeing people from all over the nation attending that specific event, how glamorous it was. And of course, the outlet malls here and 5 dollar movie Tuesdays. Yes, it maybe available in other places as well, but who does not love shopping and cheap movie tickets? :D